Children’s play

A child learns the fun way to make a pizza at Yellowcab

We are wise to take our children’s play seriously, because how children play has everything to do with how children work.  Whether they will explore the world with energy, ingenuity, resourcefulness or be enterprising, tenacious, optimistic or confident — qualities that are nurtured first and most efficiently through our children’s play. For many parents, it’s new to consider that we might actively, thoughtfully support the quality of our children’s play. More and more children are restless and out of sorts unless they are plugged in to television, the videogame or computer.

How then can we influence children’s play? To start, we can think carefully about helping our children to be resourceful when they play. We can be at our best as parents when we can truly “live off the land”  — when we can take what is available in our life and make something of it: when we create trains out of cereal boxes, turn socks into dinosaurs, puppets and blankets into curtains;  when we draw, color and spin stories together while looking up at the clouds and the different formations we see out of them. 

When we do these, we are authoring worlds of meaning, which is fundamental to all that we will do in our lives. Thus, if we want our children to be able to “live off the land”, then it is not only the playthings we give them that matter, it’s the playthings that we do not give them that matter too. The best playthings are those that teach kids that anything can become a source of adventure and inquiry. So when you are tempted to buy your child an expensive toy, think first. More often than not, it doesn’t take much for kids to enjoy play. Remember the philosophy: less is more!